'Locking' in its current incarnation works as follows. To take a continent, you have to capture every hex. If you control the entire cont, it becomes yours. To remove it, you need only to remove all of the controlling factions hexes.

So right now, the focus for Indar should be gating the TR and removing their lock - something we've come quite close to several times since they did it. However, the NC either don't realise this is how it works and attack us when they could/should be hitting the TR, or the two factions are still vaguely in collusion and the NC are actively trying to thwart attempts to remove the TR lock. I'm honestly not sure which of the two it is!